What Many Parents Miss About the Phones-in-Schools Debate

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all of this digital social worry doesn’t seem to be helping teens become more interpersonally adept. Sitting in an airport with my 18-year-old and her friend, on the way to check out a college campus this past spring, I wondered aloud why her younger sister kept calling me from school during passing periods, even though she didn’t seem to have anything to say. My older daughter saw nothing amiss; apparently she, too, often faked an urgent need to consult her phone to avoid talking with people in the halls. “Everyone” does, she said. But when kids use a phone to escape awkward interactions, they may be more likely to avoid those situations in the future—which might make future scenarios more awkward, which might, in turn, beget more avoidance, Philip C. Kendall, who directs Temple University’s Child and Adolescent Anxiety Disorders Clinic, told me. Unwanted isolation can lie just a short step away.

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